June 2003
Volume 16, Number 6
Keith E. Niedermeier is an assistant professor of marketing at Penn State University. He received his PhD in Social Psychology from Michigan State University in 1999.
I never intended to work in a business school. I was applying only for psychology jobs during my final year in graduate school at Michigan State when I received an unexpected call from a Penn State professor asking me if I ever thought about working in a marketing department. Unbeknownst to me, the faculty at Penn State was considering hiring a social psychologist and had contacted one of my professors looking for candidates. Although my professor recommended me and discussed my previous work in the advertising industry, he neglected to tell me about it; and I was caught completely off guard. After a rather awkward conversation, I began to research the possibility of leaving psychology for marketing. I read through marketing journals and talked to people who had already traveled this path. I decided to contact the people at Penn State to express my interest and I was invited to interview.
When I visited Penn State, I could sense that the faculty was divided. Some were very interested in hiring a "pure" social psychologist, while others seemed resistant to the idea. It did not help that my job talk was on a topic that had nothing to do with marketing because I had never done any research in marketing. The majority of my work was on juror decision-making, but I was very interested in applying these concepts to consumer behavior. Apparently, I impressed enough of the faculty, because I received an offer shortly after my interview.
While I was happy to have the offer, it put me in a difficult position because I had barely begun to compete on the psychology market and I had no idea of what my other opportunities might be. Additionally, I was concerned about what others might think because I had heard people call psychologists working in business schools "sell-outs" more than once. I was reassured to find that my professors at Michigan State were very supportive and told me to make my decision based on the kind of work I would do and the colleagues I would have. They encouraged me to investigate the pros and cons of the job and not worry about any negative assumptions that a few people might make.
There were many intriguing things about taking a job in marketing. I did had interest in consumer behavior from working in advertising and doing theoretical work with an applied flavor appealed to me. Also, there were certainly other positives such as higher salary, lighter teaching load, and less pressure to obtain grants. But the most exciting thing was the intellectual diversity in the department. There were consumer behaviorists, statistical modelers, and marketing management researchers all on the same floor in the same building. People from very different academic backgrounds were attacking similar problems from different angles. I believe this is a huge strength of the marketing discipline. However, this diversity also presents a challenge. At times, people with different theoretical perspectives and research values tend to be dismissive of perspectives that are not their own. Although this is certainly true in psychology, I believe it is much more intense in marketing.
While there are many minor normative differences between psychology and marketing, probably the most serious difference is the number and variety of journals. While there are many high quality outlets in psychology, there are only five journals in marketing that are widely accepted as "A" level. Moreover, only one of these journals is very accepting of theoretically driven psychology-styled research. This effectively limits top-level publications for a consumer behaviorist to one journal. Of course there are other high-quality consumer behavior outlets that publish very good papers, but the perception is that this single journal is the only true "A" for consumer behavior research. Furthermore, publications in disciplines other than marketing are somewhat discounted.
While I don't regret my decision to move into marketing, the worst part was losing some of the working relationships I had with people in psychology. I do not have an academic lineage in marketing so I had to integrate myself and spend my time working with other marketing researchers. However, finding new colleagues and being challenged with new ideas has been exhilarating. In the end, I am very positive about the choice I made and I continue to be excited about conducting my psychology-based research in a consumer behavior context.
